This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Spanish PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related articles  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Cardiovascular System  • JAMA Patient Page  • Cardiovascular Disease/ Myocardial Infarction  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

The major pumping chamber of the heart is the left ventricle. This heart chamber pumps oxygenated blood into the aorta, the large blood vessel that delivers blood to the body's tissues. If the left ventricle has to work too hard, its muscle hypertrophies (enlarges) and becomes thick. This is called left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH). Because of the increased thickness, blood supply to the muscle itself may become inadequate. This can lead to cardiac ischemia (not enough blood and oxygen at the tissue level), myocardial infarction (heart attack), or heart failure. The November 17, 2004, issue of JAMA includes several articles about reducing the risks of heart failure and death from LVH by treating high blood pressure.

CAUSES OF LVH

• Hypertension (high blood pressure)
  
• Obesity
  
• Aortic valve stenosis (narrowing of the valve from the heart to the aorta)
  
• Obstructive cardiomyopathy (an inherited type of LVH that slows blood flow to the aorta . . . [Full Text of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

RELATED ARTICLES

Regression of Electrocardiographic Left Ventricular Hypertrophy During Antihypertensive Treatment and the Prediction of Major Cardiovascular Events
Peter M. Okin, Richard B. Devereux, Sverker Jern, Sverre E. Kjeldsen, Stevo Julius, Markku S. Nieminen, Steven Snapinn, Katherine E. Harris, Peter Aurup, Jonathan M. Edelman, Hans Wedel, Lars H. Lindholm, Björn Dahlöf, and for the LIFE Study Investigators
JAMA. 2004;292(19):2343-2349.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Prognostic Significance of Left Ventricular Mass Change During Treatment of Hypertension
Richard B. Devereux, Kristian Wachtell, Eva Gerdts, Kurt Boman, Markku S. Nieminen, Vasilios Papademetriou, Jens Rokkedal, Katherine Harris, Peter Aurup, and Björn Dahlöf
JAMA. 2004;292(19):2350-2356.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT